Gaming
We Got to Try Out Kritika Online at PAX, and It was Awesome!
We published an article a few weeks back on the upcoming MMO from En Masse titled Kritika Online. I was really excited this weekend when I arrived at PAX and a demo for the game was set up to allow attendees to get a taste of the action-packed adventure.
Together with two other teammates, I played through a short little instance designed to show off the fighting style and gameplay. I took up the sword of the Berserker, and my teammates played a caster and some sort of cat girl rogue – the addition of which is not surprising considering En Masse’s track record!
The three of us put on headsets and an employee from En Masse gave us a quick overview of what we could expect from the instance. He explained that Kritika Online is an MMO with strong RPG aspects and a action-oriented fighting combat style. The game will feature “hubs” where players can meet up and interact, but the majority of the adventuring will take place in short instanced bursts. En Masse wanted to make sure you can pick up and play Kritika no matter how limited your time might be.
I’m unclear as to whether the demo we were playing is actually an instance in the game or if it was designed specifically to show off the game’s features, but true to the game design philosophy the entire run probably took about 10 minutes total.
I’m not sure how my teammates classes played, but Berserker was an absolute blast. A stereotypical warrior class, Berserker builds and expends rage in order to deal damage. Like many fighting games, abilities link together to form combos, but I didn’t have enough time to really sink my teeth into the system so I was mostly button mashing (which was still fun!) Each class also has an ultimate ability the employee described as “Similar to your ‘R’ in League”. That is, it’s a powerful skill on a long cooldown.
The instance was similar to what you’d expect from an MMO, honestly. A few rooms of trash packs followed by a boss with a couple of mechanics. Rinse and repeat. I’m hopeful that the enemies we were fighting are no indication of the difficulty content poses later on in the game, as the few mechanics bosses featured were pretty easily ignored in favor of a full zerg strategy.
Combat was fluid, flashy, and enjoyable. I had a lot of fun and I had no idea what I’m doing. I’m sure it will be even more enjoyable when you have time to figure out what abilities chain together.
Kritika launches a closed beta in May, and if you have any friends that went to PAX and tried the game they should have a total of 5 closed beta invites to hand out. There’s no current release date for when we can expect to see Kritika, but we’ll be sure to update you when we learn more.
Gaming
Ubisoft says that future Assassin’s Creed games will need more time to be made
As Assassin’s Creed Shadows is about to sneak up on people in November, Ubisoft says that the time between developing games needs to be longer to find the “right balance.” Shadows has been in development for four years, longer than any other game in the series up to this point. That includes the huge open-world epics Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.
Shadows lead producer Karl Onnée (thanks, GamesIndustry.biz) says that the latest AC game took 25% longer to make than Valhalla. He says this is necessary to keep the quality of the series that it is known for: “It’s always a balance between time and costs, but the more time you have, the more you can iterate.” You can speed up a project by adding more people to it, but that doesn’t give you more time to make changes.
Onnée says this has as much to do with immersion and aesthetics as it does with fixing bugs and smoothing out pixels. This is because the development team needs time to learn about each new historical setting: “We are trying to make a game that is as real as possible.” We’re proud of it, and the process took a long time. In feudal Japan, building a house is very different from building a house in France or England in the Middle Ages. As an artist, you need to learn where to put things in a feudal Japanese home. For example, food might not belong there. Get all the information you need and learn it. That process takes a long time.”
You’ll have to wait a little longer for Ubisoft to work on each game. Are you okay with that? In what part of Shadows are you now? Is it interesting to you? Leave a comment below and let us know.
Gaming
You can now pre-order Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP on PS5
You can now pre-order Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP, a remaster that Dragami Games and Capcom both created. You can now pre-order the PS5 game on the PS Store for $44.99 or £39.99. If you have PS Plus, you can get an extra 10% off the price.
The company put out a new trailer with about three minutes of gameplay to mark the start of the pre-order period. Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP is a remaster of Grasshopper Manufacture’s crazy action game from 2012. You play as Juliet, a high school student who fights off waves of zombies.
The remaster adds RePOP mode, an alternative mode that swaps out the blood and gore for fun visual effects. It also adds a bunch of other features and improvements that make the game better overall. You can expect the graphics and sound to be better as well.
The game will now come out on September 12, 2024, instead of September 12, 2024. Are you excited to get back to this? Please cheer us on in the section below.
Gaming
This Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 zombies trailer is way too expensive
Is there really anyone who is following the story of Call of Duty’s zombie mode? We’ve known about the story in a vague way for a while, but we couldn’t tell you anything about it. It looks like the “Dark Aether” story will continue in Black Ops 6, but we don’t really know what that means.
For those of you who care, here is the official blurb with some background: “Requiem, led by the CIA, finally closed the last-dimensional portal, sending its inhabitants back to the nightmare world known as the Dark Aether, after two years of fighting zombie outbreaks around the world during the Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War timeline.”
Wait, there’s more! “Agent Samantha Maxis gave her life to seal this weird dimension from the inside out.” Even worse things were to come: senior staff members of Requiem were arrested without a reason by the Project Director, who turned out to be Edward Richtofen.
Black Ops 6 will take place about five years later, and it looks like it will show more about Richtofen’s goals and motivations. The most important thing is that you will probably be shooting an unimaginable number of zombies in the head. This week, on August 8, there will be a full reveal of the gameplay, so keep an eye out for that.
- Gadgets10 years ago
Why the Nexus 7 is still a good tablet in 2015
- Mobile Devices10 years ago
Samsung Galaxy Note 4 vs Galaxy Note 5: is there room for improvement?
- Editorials10 years ago
Samsung Galaxy Note 4 – How bad updates prevent people from enjoying their phones
- Mobile Devices9 years ago
Nexus 5 2015 and Android M born to be together
- Gaming10 years ago
New Teaser For Five Nights At Freddy’s 4
- Mobile Devices9 years ago
Google not releasing Android M to Nexus 7
- Gadgets10 years ago
Moto G Android 5.0.2 Lollipop still has a memory leak bug
- Mobile Devices9 years ago
Nexus 7 2015: Huawei and Google changing the game